Is Possible Love Worth Watching? Lee Chang-dong’s Slow, Devastating Return

Is Possible Love worth watching? Lee Chang-dong's first film since Burning is on Netflix with a Venice prize and near-unanimous reviews - and a 164-minute runtime that is the only real argument against it.

Short answer: yes — if you can give it an evening. Is Possible Love worth watching at 164 minutes, in Korean, with long silences and no tidy ending? Critics have answered that question about as loudly as critics can. Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning in 2018 began streaming on Netflix worldwide on 6 November 2026, after a limited US theatrical run from 23 October, carrying the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize from Venice and South Korea’s submission for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards (Shortlist).

It is not a romance, whatever the title suggests. It is a film about two marriages, one documentary camera, and what wanting does to people who have very different amounts of money.

Is Possible Love worth watching if you loved Burning?

The set-up is simple and loaded. Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) lost his factory job after a strike was violently suppressed and now drinks; his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) works in a mask factory and holds the family together; documentary filmmaker Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) is making a film about the layoffs and befriends them, camera in hand; her wealthy husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) watches from a comfortable distance (RogerEbert.com; Decider).

The film opens with the Tenth Commandment — “Thou shalt not covet” — borrowed from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog: Ten, and then watches each character covet something: money, ease, attention, a story (RogerEbert.com; AwardsWatch). The Film Stage calls it a novelistic gem and the most substantial film in Venice competition, while noting it is less allegorical and more didactic than Burning — social argument wrapped in drama rather than the other way round (The Film Stage).

If Burning stayed with you for days, this is an easy recommendation. If you needed Burning to explain itself, be warned: Lee has not become more forthcoming.

Possible Love Netflix review scores are unusually one-sided

Aggregators rarely agree this completely. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 98 percent from 94 reviews, Certified Fresh, with all 28 top critics positive; on Metacritic it scores 95 from 32 critics, and even its lowest-scoring review, from Slant Magazine, gave it 75 (Shortlist). Audiences are a step behind at 86 percent on the Popcornmeter — warm, but twelve points cooler than the critics (Shortlist).

The individual verdicts line up. AwardsWatch graded it A and argued its sharpest idea is that the working class is now exploited for content as much as for labour — misery recorded, packaged and consumed (AwardsWatch). Decider’s verdict was a plain STREAM IT, praising a film that shows more than it tells and performances that stick after the credits (Decider). RogerEbert.com called it one of the best films of 2026 and as dense as good literature (RogerEbert.com).

Lee Chang-dong Possible Love lives or dies on four performances

Every review singles out Jeon Do-yeon. She plays Mi-ok as a woman clinging to a new friendship like a life jacket, and one drunken, laughing dinner scene lands, in RogerEbert.com’s account, as pure release in a life of sadness (RogerEbert.com). AwardsWatch notes how she captures class in tiny gestures — sipping shyly through a straw in a café she is not used to — without caricature (AwardsWatch). She is the film’s sole acting nominee at the Gotham Awards, where it is also nominated for Best International Feature and screenplay, with winners named on 30 November (Shortlist).

Sul Kyung-gu makes Ho-seok’s silence physical: a man who walks out of group therapy but breaks down when Ye-ji’s camera is on him, which is the film’s whole argument in one contrast (RogerEbert.com). Cho Yeo-jeong never settles whether Ye-ji’s friendship is sincere or opportunistic, and the film is better for the ambiguity — her weapon, as AwardsWatch puts it, is intimacy in pursuit of a story (AwardsWatch).

Possible Love Rotten Tomatoes score aside, the runtime is the real test

The reservations are consistent, and they are about time. At 2 hours 44 minutes, the middle stretch tests patience; Time Out’s main reservation is pace, and even The Film Stage, which made it a Critic’s Pick, wondered whether Lee had bitten off more than the film could chew (Shortlist; The Film Stage). The film is rated R for language, some sexuality and nudity, and it is in Korean with subtitles (Shortlist).

Our recommendation: watch it, but watch it properly. One sitting, phone in another room, start by 20:00 and you are done before 23:00. Skip it on a night you want plot to move fast or romance to bloom — the love in the title turns out to mean something closer to empathy, and empathy here is hard, uneven work. For viewers who give it the evening, this is the strongest drama to arrive on streaming this month.

Photo: Kalai Ramu, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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